Last
week, I wrote a blog called
"The Indictment of Wayne Pacelle" where I laid out ten examples of how
Pacelle, the CEO of the Humane Society of the United States has used his
position in the animal protection movement to harm animals:

In count one,
I argued that Wayne Pacelle betrayed the victims of Michael Vick by lobbying
to have them killed, even as he embraced their abuser, to the detriment of
the animals and our cause.

In count two, I showed how in 1993, Wayne
Pacelle's group, the Fund For Animals, sought legislation to round up and
kill cats in California. Despite only a couple of cat rabies cases per year,
and some years none, one of those bills would have empowered animal control
officers to kill cats on sight in the field if they didn't have proof of
rabies.

In count three, I discussed how in 2007, Wayne Pacelle lobbied
to have Michael Vick's victims killed, falsely claiming that "Officials from
our organization have examined some of these dogs and, generally speaking,
they are some of the most aggressively trained pit bulls in the country." In
fact, following their actual assessment, only one dog was deemed too vicious
to save. He thus lied, perjuring himself as an advocate for the mass
slaughter of abuse victims. But he almost succeeded in having them killed.

In count four, I wrote how in April of 2008, the town council of
Randolph, Iowa announced a bounty, offering $5 to anyone who brought a cat
to the pound. In most cases, those cats would be put to death. While cat
lovers cried foul and tried to stop the initiative, Pacelle's handpicked
Vice-President of Companion Animals at HSUS, the man who himself killed
animals as the director of a pound in Florida, defended the Randolph effort
saying that HSUS doesn't have a problem with killing stray cats.

In
count five, I demonstrated how in August of 2008, the pound in Tangipahoa
Parish, LA ordered the killing of every animal in their facility. The
culprit: a mild corona virus that caused diarrhea in just a handful of dogs,
which is not contagious to cats, and is self-limiting, meaning it resolves
on its own without any medical intervention. More than 170 dogs and cats
were killed. HSUS came to the pound's defense, blaming the killing on pet
overpopulation and that people do not care enough about animals, thereby
exonerating the pound.

In count six, I showed how in February of 2009,
over 150 Pit Bull-type dogs and puppies were seized from a dog fighter in
Wilkes County, North Carolina. Each and every one was systematically put to
death over the opposition of rescue groups, dog advocates, and others. Some
of the puppies were born after the seizure. And a foster parent was even
ordered to return two-week old puppies she had nursed back to health to be
killed. As with the Vick case, HSUS staff perjured themselves before the
court, testifying that all the dogs, including the two week old bottle
feeders, were irremediably vicious and should be put to death. The court
sided with Pacelle's "experts." 150 victims lay dead, not by a dog fighter,
not by an abuser, but because of Wayne Pacelle's insistence that they should
be put to death.

In count seven, I explained how in March 2009, a San
Francisco, CA Commission took up the issue of a No Kill city by considering
shelter reform legislation to mandate the types of lifesaving programs the
pounds in that community were refusing to implement voluntarily, killing
animals for being "too fat," "too old," "too playful," and "too shy." But
the law, and the No Kill reform effort, was be tabled after Pacelle himself
wrote a letter insisting on the right of "shelters" to kill animals in the
face of readily available lifesaving alternatives they simply refuse to
implement, arguing that pet overpopulation prevented more lifesaving, and
arguing that "shelters" should not be regulated.

In count eight, I
showed how a 2010 survey of New York State rescue groups found that 71% of
them were being turned away by at least one "shelter," and those "shelters"
then turned around and killed the very animals they offered to save. The end
result is that tens of thousands of animals are being killed in New York
State pounds even though they have an immediate place to go. Legislation to
mandate collaboration which would have saved those lives at no cost to
taxpayers, was not supported by HSUS. And when animal advocates tried to
mandate shelter reform in Texas, including banning the cruel gas chamber,
HSUS helped coordinate the opposition, which argued that shelters are the
experts and should be left to decide how they operate.

In count nine, I
explained how every year, Wayne Pacelle's organization calls for a
celebration called "National Animal Shelter Appreciation Week," where we are
asked to reward animal shelters and the "dedicated people" who work at them.
According to the annual press release, HSUS is "the strongest advocate" for
shelters. But at the same time as HSUS proclaims itself the Number 1
cheerleader for killing shelters in the country, there is an ever-increasing
amount of nationwide media coverage revealing widespread animal neglect and
outright abuse at these very institutions. And when it does come out, HSUS
either is silent, looks the other way, or, more egregiously, defends the
abusive and/or poorly performing "shelters," as they did in King County,
Washington, Miami-Dade, Florida, Eugene, Oregon, New York City, Rockland
County, New York, Paige County, Virginia, and elsewhere.

In count ten, I
demonstrated a deliberate strategy of fraud in HSUS fundraising under
Pacelle's leadership. When Wayne Pacelle misled donors by asking for money
for the care of the Michael Vick dogs even though HSUS not only wasn't
caring for the dogs, but was actively seeking to have them put to death, it
wasn't the first time he did so. Misrepresentation is a recurring pattern
and deliberate part of Pacelle's fundraising strategy: Hurricane Katrina,
Hurricane Gustav, deliberately confusing donors that they are the local
humane society, and the "Faye" debacle, are just some of the scandals I
discussed.

HSUS responded in part and self-proclaimed "animal rights"
defenders of HSUS responded in part, in a combination of "explanatory"
e-mails directly from HSUS and on "animal rights" list-serves and discussion
groups. Not a single one of them, however, has responded to the allegations.
How could they? They offer damning, irrefutable evidence that Pacelle and
his acolytes at HSUS have engaged in a consistent pattern to kill animals or
cause animals to be killed, to defraud donors, and to thwart reform efforts
in local communities across the country designed to improve neglectful and
abusive killing pounds. In fact, both HSUS and its supports have essentially
conceded them. It is one thing to ignore the "indictment" altogether. It is
quite another to issue a response and not mention why they committed fraud
in fundraising, why they called for the killing of bottle feeding puppies,
why they fight for the right of shelters to kill animals, and why they
opposed legislation banning the cruel gas chamber. That is tantamount to an
admission on all counts.

Instead, HSUS and its killing apologists argued
that:

Michael Vick deserves a second chance.

HSUS does so much good.

I'm anti-animal because in 2007, I answered some questions posed to me
in an e-mail from an organization called the Center for Consumer Freedom,
which is funded by agribusiness.

�Michael Vick's Victims Should be
Killed; Their Abuser Deserves To Abuse Even More Dogs'

The argument that
Michael Vick deserves a second chance, even as HSUS argued that his victims
did not, speaks for itself. To this day, Vick claims that his beating dogs
to death, electrocuting them, hanging them, shooting them, drowning them,
and burying them alive was his way of expressing "a different kind of love"
and Wayne Pacelle has agreed. Tragically, not only would Michael Vick still
be doing those things if he could, Pacelle has tried to help him do it by
claiming that "Mike," as he calls the most notorious animal abuser of our
generation and the newest spokesman for HSUS, would make a good dog owner
and should be allowed to have dogs again. Indeed, by giving Vick his old
life back, Pacelle has undone the lesson every kid in American learned:
abuse a dog and you'll lose everything. Instead, with the embrace of Vick,
he gave them a very different lesson: if the lives of animals don't matter
much to the Humane Society of the United States, why should they matter to
you.

�HSUS Deserves a Blank Check to Harm Animals'

The argument that
we should all ignore the "crimes" Pacelle has committed against animals,
because HSUS does so many good things for animals would be ludicrous, if it
wasn't so disturbing. But it is an argument that appears to have resonated
with some animal rights activists; arguments also being made both about the
ASPCA's pro-killing policies and PETA's campaign not only to seek out and
exterminate thousands of animals a year, but to give pounds the ability to
slaughter even more than they already do. In short, they are saying that,
"HSUS does so much good, they should have carte blanche to do terrible,
irreversible, life ending things, too."

Even if it were true that HSUS
does "so many good things" for animals (and
I am not so sure that they do), it does not entitle them to a blank
check to call for the killing of two-week old puppies. It does not entitle
them to thwart the efforts of animal lovers trying to end the killing of
dogs and cats in their communities. It does not entitle them to perjure
themselves in court so that 150 dogs, including bottle-feeding puppies, are
put to death. It does not entitle them to defraud donors by misrepresenting
the work of rescue groups as their own. Nor does it entitle them to excuse
the mass killing of cats in response to diarrhea in a small handful of dogs.
Yet that is HSUS' argument, and that is the argument apologists for HSUS
(and ASPCA and PETA) are making on behalf of the organization.

While my blogs refuting the puppy mill rumors have quieted
those allegations, people continue to spread the rumor that I am a front for
the Center for Consumer Freedom, that, in fact, my efforts to publicly
expose the actions taken by HSUS and PETA that result in direct harm to
animals are motivated not by a desire to stop that harm and reorient those
organizations back to life-saving, but by a desire to harm the animal rights
movement. Anyone who has read my books on sheltering (Redemption
and
Irreconcilable Differences) or any of the other extensive writings I
have done would know how hollow these assertions are. These writings
demonstrate that my goal is to end the unnecessary killing of four million
animals in our nation's pounds every year. They also reveal that the biggest
roadblock standing in the way of that success is the animal protection
movement itself: primarily the regressive kill-oriented directors of roughly
3,000 "shelters" across the country, and the leadership of the large,
national organizations that protect and defend them and their "right to
kill," namely, Wayne Pacelle, Ingrid Newkirk at PETA, and Ed Sayres of the
ASPCA, organizations and individuals I have no choice but to fight out of
tragic and dire necessity.

The basis of their claim that I am a front for
the Center for Consumer Freedom is that in 2007, I received an e-mail from
one of their representatives relating to my book Redemption, asking me if I
would answer roughly half a dozen questions about it. I agreed to answer
their questions in an e-mail back to them on one condition. I told them that
if I did answer their questions, they could not edit them for content. And
they had to print them verbatim or send them to me for review, where I will
exercise veto power over their right to publish them. They agreed. And
I answered the questions. I have never met the Center for Consumer
Freedom people, do not and have not ever received any money from them, and
do not agree with their other views about animals. In fact,
All American Vegan, my vegan cookbook coauthored with my wife, promotes
a vision for society fundamentally at odds with the Center for Consumer
Freedom mandate. They do not support the book and they've not promoted it.

Ironically, about the same time, HSUS asked if they could interview me about
the No Kill movement, and I agreed with the same caveat, knowing that they
have printed outright lies about the No Kill movement in their publications
in the past. I told them they had to print my answers verbatim or send them
to me for review and I would exercise veto power over their right to publish
them. They refused. And I did not do the interview. But had they agreed, had
they done so, no one could claim I was in league with HSUS. Such a claim
would be absurd, given my vociferous opposition to their policies which
favor killing.

And though I do not agree with the Center for Consumer
Freedom on their larger platform, on the issue of HSUS and PETA hypocrisy
over their embrace of killing, and in the case of PETA their actual killing,
they are correct. It is not the Center for Consumer Freedom which is
thwarting our effort to achieve a No Kill nation, it is Wayne Pacelle and
Ingrid Newkirk. In fact, it is also those individuals who seek to shield
HSUS and PETA from public accountability for their actions, or as in the
current situation, who imply that those of us who expect that the people who
staff those organizations have a duty to authentically represent our cause
and not misuse or abuse their power, that are harmful to the animal
protection movement.

Every time the Center for Consumer Freedom places an
ad in a newspaper that exposes the grisly and deeply disturbing truth about
PETA's killing, or the truth about HSUS' fraudulent fundraising claims, our
anger should be directed at those committing the "crimes" being reported,
not those reporting it. Our anger should be against Pacelle and Newkirk not
only for harming animals, but for misrepresenting our movement. The longer
we seek to shield Newkirk and Pacelle from their "crimes" and from a public
accounting for their decisions which harm the well-being of animals, the
more emboldened their corruption will become, and, in the case of PETA, the
more animals they will continue to seek out to kill.

Were we to simply
clean house as a movement, and expel from our ranks those who seek to
subvert the very goals we exist to promote, we would eliminate one of the
sharpest weapons anti-animal organizations have to fight the cause of animal
protection: the hypocrisy of our so-called leaders. That the Center for
Consumer Freedom has chosen to fight by working to expose the corruption of
the animal rights movement is, in many ways, a Catch-22. Should they prevail
in forcing reform of HSUS and PETA�a cause I fully endorse as should every
true animal lover�they lose a powerful weapon, and the broader animal
protection movement benefits as a result. By defending HSUS and PETA,
self-proclaimed "animal rights" activists are also subverting our cause.

We are, and should be, first and foremost a movement of ideals, a belief in
the right of animals to be free of suffering and abuse, and, most
importantly, to be free to live their lives. These values are the heart of
our cause, the reason we exist. Organizations and leaders exist to promote
ideals. As I have written so many times before, it is not who is right, but
what is right that should dictate our behavior and our allegiance. When
individuals and organizations authentically represent the goals of our
movement, we should stand by them. When individuals and organizations fail
to do so, as HSUS and PETA have done over and over again, not only should we
expose them for the frauds that they are, our duty to animals dictates that
we do.

I wrote Redemption because my pleas to shelters and my pleas to
the large national organizations that the key to ending the killing had been
discovered was falling on deaf or defiant ears. The movement chose to ignore
that success and continue killing, despite the lifesaving alternative
represented by the No Kill philosophy and made a practical reality by the No
Kill Equation. So I chose to go over their heads and take my message
directly to the people.

To that end, I chose to speak�and will continue
to speak�with anyone who wants to listen about how the organizations that
are supposed to champion animals in reality cause them great harm. I believe
that by talking to anyone and everyone about shelter killing and the
hypocrisy of groups like HSUS and PETA, we will eventually reach a critical
consensus against killing and in favor of No Kill and fix our nation's cruel
and dysfunctional animal shelter system.

Because if we wait for those who
claim to be motivated by a love of animals but who blindly follow Pacelle
and Newkirk, animals will continue to be neglected, abused, and needlessly
killed in perpetuity. We must reach a larger audience because our so-called
"friends" refuse to educate themselves and learn the truth about who they've
given their allegiance to (it is certainly not the animals). They are
intellectually lazy and looking for a convenient excuse to ignore the No
Kill message in favor of the status quo which is comfortable, familiar, and
does not require re-orienting their world view. They've found their identity
intertwined with their association with HSUS or PETA and the animals can be
damned before they'll give that up.

But I've got a message for them, for
anyone who would dismiss me because I chose to answer some questions in an
e-mail: As an activist, as someone who claims to care about animals, you
have a choice as well. You can choose to listen to that message and help us
end the unnecessary killing of millions of animals every year, or you can
choose to believe untrue rumors and allegations that give you a convenient
excuse not to, and become a roadblock to saving four million animals a year,
a killing which is being supported by organizations you embrace. The choice
is yours.

But if you continue to embrace Wayne Pacelle despite his own
embrace of the most notorious animal abuser of our generation, even after he
lobbied to have that abuser's victims killed; If you embrace Wayne Pacelle
despite all he has done to harm animals under the theory that his
organization is entitled to a blank check because they do other "good
things" for animals; If you give your allegiance to an organization because
it claims to be for animals welfare or animal rights, even though they
actively undermine the rights of animals and, in fact, work to kill them;
you do not really care about or value animals. You certainly do not love
them, because there is no way to torture the definition of "love" enough to
encompass an embrace of someone who promotes killing, is an apologist for
killers, an accomplice to killing, a defender of abusive pounds, a thief, a
bully, and a liar, with "crimes" against animals going back over 15 years.
If you support him despite that, you are a fake. And you know it.